Reporting to: Director of Production
Location: New York preferred, Los Angeles possible for an exceptional candidate (frequent travel needed between NYC and LA)
Duties & Responsibilities
1. Venue search and negotiation
- Responsible for venue search and negotiation for US fairs
- Liaison with property companies and city officials where necessary (with Endeavor’s government relations team) to find and secure venues
- Support negotiation with unions where necessary (led by Frieze’s union team) to ensure that union costs are minimized, and fairs are commercially viable.
- Opportunity to do venue search and negotiation for other Frieze business development opportunities (e.g. if No.9 Cork Street model is rolled out to the US)
- Research and development for new cities
2. Venue relationships
- Responsible for strategic venue relationship management in the US – first point of contact for contract management and strategic plans
3. Procurement
- Manage US vendor relationships (excluding Exhibitor Production vendors)
- Negotiation and management of contracts and tender processes for strategic suppliers
- Using US network constantly research and assess potential alternative suppliers that come into the market
- Build a reliable and experienced network of freelancers
4. Production
- Develop the overall strategy for the fair layouts and associated budget for each annual US fair with Production Director, UK Production team and US Production company
- Responsible for resolving strategic production issues as well as any “BAU” issues that are most effectively resolved by resource “on the ground” as required
- Role will need to stay in regular contact with the Director of Production, UK Production team, US-based Fair Director, CFO and Commercial Director to ensure plans for existing fairs have support from all key stakeholders.
- High level Partnerships Production
5. Budget responsibilities
- Setting and managing overall production budgets for US fairs
- Development of Production budgets for new US venues or events, with the Production Director, to assist in the evaluation of those venues by the Production Director, CFO and wider Executive team at Frieze.
Key Stakeholders
- External – city organizations and officials, venue owners/managers, union officials, production companies, commercial partners and sponsors
- Internal – working closely with Production Director and CFO and Endeavor legal team on venue search and negotiation as well as US Fair Director, UK Production team and various UK-based events teams on strategic planning for existing fairs. Given strategic nature of role will also need to interact with wider Executive team (CEO, Commercial Director, Group Fair Director etc.)
Profile & Skills
- Proven track record of venue search and contract negotiation
- Extensive operations and event management experience
- Experience in arts / cultural events strongly desirable. If no relevant sector experience must be able to understand and adapt to challenges that art world events pose.
- Strong and open communicator who is adept at working with multiple internal and external stakeholders in different time zones and locations to a common purpose
- Excellent attention to detail, with the ability to still have a ‘big picture’ overview
- Ability to lead commercial negotiations and drive forward the contract drafting with Legal to get contracts drafted efficiently and effectively
- Ability to manage large contracts and run large tender processes
- Strong network (including city, suppliers, venues and unions) desirable
- Experience of negotiating with Unions
- Ability to travel between NY and LA where required, and occasional travel to London
Frieze unites people in our love of the arts. We understand this can only be accomplished when we harness the entirety of our company and lead with a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion in everything we do. As a global company that drives culture, we are committed to practicing anti-discrimination including race, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability, together with artists, writers and cultural practitioners from all backgrounds. There is still much work to be done to address systemic inequality and discrimination within the arts and culture industry, and we are dedicated to making progress to both within our own organization and the art world at large.
Please apply via the link; https://wmeimg.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/WMEIMGUS/job/NY---New-York-247-Centre-Street-Frieze/Director--Event-Operations---US--Frieze-_JR5765